Intro and Overview

Origin Protocol is a decentralized platform based on the Ethereum blockchain, Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and many open source libraries that allows to create marketplaces and trade goods without traditional intermediaries. The project team plans to offer average exchange rate for different markets.

Product description

Technology

Origin Protocol plans to combine major advantages of IPFS (speed and reliability) and Ethereum blockchain (Plasma and sharding).

Usage of IPFS will significantly reduce the cost of posting items, as every picture will be stored off-chain and have a content address similar to a URL. A new token Filecoin will be launched to incentivize participating nodes to increase storage space and network speed.

The main principles of the project are:

Create a distributed and trustless system

Not to use single centralized providers to avoid failures

Not to reinvent a wheel, use market experience

Balance performance and computation efficiency with user experience.

Main components of Origin Protocol platform are:

The Origin decentralized application (DApp) is an open-source HTML and JavaScript application where users can interact with each other, buy and sell goods and communicate. This DApp allows sellers to create and manage listings. The DApp will use js-ipfs4 for connecting to the IPFS network and web3.js5 for smooth integrations with popular browser clients like Mist6, MetaMask7, and Toshi8. Although The Origin DApp will be the first in the Origin network, developers are welcome to create alternative applications based on Origin protocols with similar functional. The code can be checked in project’s Github profile.

The Origin developer libraries are open-source libraries that are easier for usage than direct usage of the blockchain and IPFS. A special Javascript library Origin.js will be released. The code can be checked in project’s Github profile.

The Origin protocols will define standards for marketplace functionalities like user identity, user reputation, listing creation and publishing, representation of booking intervals and rules, and transaction stages. The code can be checked in project’s Github profile.

User identity will also be an important component of the system. Users will be able to arrange transactions pseudonymously while the platform will verify their identity in two ways: using publicly auditable proofs (for example, posting their public keys on Facebook, Twitter etc.) or using verifications from the trusted third-parties.

Indexing Server will be responsible for all searches on the marketplace. This approach will allow to reduce duration of search as the system won’t have to look through the entire blockchain.

Developer Tools will be JavaScript based and will allow developers to create their own applications on the Origin platform.

Tokenomics

The Origin Protocol token ORIGIN will be used for platform security, network governance, and facilitation of buyer/seller transactions. Token will use Deposit-Challenge-Vote mechanic.

The deposit paid in ORIGIN will be needed for every listing. A listing can be challenged by any user who doubts its reliability. To make a bet, user will deposit an equal amount of ORIGIN tokens and then ask other users to vote whether this posting is a scam or not. The side with the most votes will receive a share of the forfeited deposits of the loser.

Early adopters will be encouraged to use a referral program and invite new community members to join. They will receive an algorithmic award of ORIGIN tokens based on their number of referred buyers and sellers.

Users will also be allowed to use ORIGIN tokens to pay for transactions on the platform

ORIGIN tokens will be used for increasing the trustworthiness and reputation of their accounts through staking ORIGIN tokens.

ORIGIN tokens will be provided to early adopters for every activity on the platform.

The community members will be encouraged to vote for major platform upgrades and updates. When an upgrade proposal is created, ORIGIN token holders will receive an equivalent amount of a one-time use proposal token for each proposal. ORIGIN stakeholders will then send proposal tokens to special smart contracts representing each proposal to cast their support. Any proposal tokens that are not used to cast votes are burned after the vote.

Delivery

Roadmap

Origin Protocol has recently launched Beta version of the product which was planned for the Q3 2018, where users are able to post listings and make purchases on testnet. During Mainnet Beta period, buyers and sellers will be able to transact with real ETH on a Craigslist-style marketplace.

The plan for Q4 is published in details in their Medium account:

Make the Origin platform ready for our developer partners to build on

Learn from early data and iterate in order to markedly improve our DApp’s user experience

Matthew Liu, Co-Founder – a former PM at YouTube, Qwiki, and Bonobos. MS from Stanford in Management Science and Engineering. LinkedIn profile

Stan James, Senior Engineer, has 20+ years of software engineering experience. Previously CTO at Lijit Networks which managed to raise $1.5 million in seed and $3.3 million in Series A venture round. LinkedIn profile

Andrew Hyde, Community lead, the founder of four startups, including Startup Weekend. Also worked at TechStars. LinkedIn profile

Advisors

Addison Huegel is a communications and marketing specialist with a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley. He previously worked with the Ethereum Foundation and DEVCON1. LinkedIn profile

Melody He is founder of Spartan Group, a blockchain advisory and investment fund. She was an early investor in TenX and strategic advisor to Gifto and Appcoins. LinkedIn profile

Paul Veradittakit is a Partner at Pantera Capital. He is also an advisor to several crypto projects including Orchid Labs, Enigma and ICON. LinkedIn profile

Joey Krug is the co-founder of Augur, the world’s first decentralized prediction market and oracle system. He is also the Co-Chief Investment Officer at Pantera Capital, and has advised several ICOs, such as Protocol 0x. LinkedIn profile

Partners

Origin has 53 partners including BEE, CanYa, Propy, and WeTrust.

Token distribution and token sale details

Total Token Offered

TBA

Private sale Date

Closed

Public Tokensale Date

Won’t be held

A large portion of Origin’s crowdsale will go towards the Origin Community Fund, which will go towards project governance, an investment committee to review future grants, employing developers to review open source contributions, as well as regular technical and financial auditing.

Hype

Website review

Origin Protocol web page has too little data for similarweb to show the activity. According to Whois service, web page was registered in 2017. Mostly the traffic consists from direct visits (34%), referrals (29%) and search requests (32%).

They are producing quite a large hype wave through Internet media with publications at Techcrunch, Coindesk, Blockchain News and others. There are also lots of positive blockchain bloggers reviews.

Conclusions and editorial opinion

Risks and Potential

Advantages

More than 50 blockchain projects have already indicated that they will be using Origin Protocol (Wehome, Storiqa, Blocklancer, Propy and many others).

Each dApp will consider its fee policy, which would be considerably smaller than the whales have now (e.g. Airbnb has a fee of up to 20%, Booking and Uber – up to 30%, Ebay – 10%) or there is a fee free possibility.

Fast growing market, according to Brooking Institution research the sharing economy is estimated to grow from $14 billion in 2014 to $335 billion by 2025.

Origin team has launched Beta version on October 10th.

Strong team, whose members were founders of many successful startups, that were acquired by Google, Walmart Labs, Yahoo, Federated Media, The Home Deposit.

High competition, it will be hard for Origin to chase whales, since sellers got used to their services, moreover they trust these platforms. Also there are alike blockchain platforms.

Roadmap lacks details, according to it tokens will be distributed in Q3 2018, first dApps will appear at the same time.

Investment prospects

The project targeted a rapidly growing market, which is controlled by giants (Airbnb, Uber, Ebay…), but the team suggests a new approach with less fees and much more secure procedures for users. However the hype rate is medium, so Origin should pay more attention to marketing. The team is very competent in creating and launching projects, so the platform has good chance to penetrate the market. In our opinion the project should be considered as a long term investment with medium risks and high ROI.

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